Back to Normalcy

So happy to report my little family is back together. Here's what's been going on the last few days:

On Friday, I took my fur-child downtown for a little energy burning. We stumbled upon a group of guys all decked out playing some traditional German music. I took this video, and the little kid that walks up and starts taking the money out of their suitcase really cracks me up:

Greg got back from his week up north in Dusseldorf, Cologne & Hamburg this morning at 7:30am. They drove through the night for 10 hours from Hamburg back home, and of course I couldn't sleep until he got back so we are both pretty exhausted today.
Some photos from his trip:

Hotel room in Dusseldorf. He said in order to turn on the lights in the hotel rooms, you had to have your room key slid into this device. That way, when you left your room, there was no way you could leave the lights on! Prime example of how Germany conserves energy! 

Greg says the trip was pretty uneventful, save for a team bowling night. There were four teams: Americans, Canadians, German/Canadians (players with dual citizenship), and Germans. The Americans won, in case you're interested. 

Hotel room in Hamburg. He said the rooms at the hotels were pretty big compared to the other hotels he's been in so far.

On the last night of their trip, a second bus driver was flown out to Hamburg. It is DEL regulation that if you're driving through the night, you have to have two drivers. Each can only drive 6 hours before they have to turn the wheel over to the other driver.

Arriving at the rink in Cologne. Huge stadium, as you can see.

Greg says at every meal the team did a "shoe check." A "shoe check", in case you didn't know, is a pretty standard thing on road trips in hockey. What happens is, during a meal, someone from the team will quietly crawl under the table and dump some sort of condiment on one of the player's shoe. Once they get back to their seat, everyone clinks their glasses and when that happens, they know to check their shoes. Usually the team has a good laugh at the expense of whoever was "shoe checked". Unfortunately, sometimes the person who was "shoe checked" has a permanent reminder of it.

One morning, the player who was the first down for breakfast crawled under the buffet table with a bowl of raspberry yogurt and put it on guys' shoes as they walked through the breakfast line. When they all sat down, the glasses were clinked, and 6 guys were "shoe checked".

Incidentally, this happened at our wedding. All of Greg's hockey friends asked him to take a picture together and while they were posing, someone came up from behind and poured ketchup on Greg's (rented!) shoes. When they began to clink their glasses, we started to kiss, you know, cuz it was our wedding, and all the guys were like, "No, no, your shoeeees!" Haha.

Annway, today Greg had practice, and I went to the gym. Then we picked up Buckles and went out to lunch. Lunch was followed by a walk...

And now it's time for a nap. Ideal Saturday.